


Rack and Ruin

by shutupeccles



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Light Bondage, M/M, Plot Twist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-09
Updated: 2010-06-09
Packaged: 2017-11-01 17:34:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/359477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shutupeccles/pseuds/shutupeccles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That evil, duplicitous sorceror Merlin is being interrogated on the rack. Arthur dioubts he's as evil as Uther insists. Sex ensues. But Merlin still has to die...doesn't he?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rack and Ruin

The winch turned.

The ropes and chains pulled.

The warlock on the rack made no sound as his limbs came closer to dislocation.

He looked to the door as the prince entered. Fear was visible in his blue eyes for the first time since his capture.

The King noticed. He also noticed angry determination in Arthur’s as they met those of the disgraced manservant.

“Arthur...” Uther stepped between them. Arthur’s expression did not change as he interrupted.

“I will deal with this Father. I was the one harbouring this--...” Arthur could not finish the sentence as fear and anger met once more.

“Arthur...” Uther solidly began again.

“I should have been the first to see him for what he is and expose him, not the last. I alone can rectify my mistake.”

His hand curled for a surer grip on his hilt.

“Leave us,” Uther commanded the torturer and official witness.

“Alone.” 

Arthur’s voice was no less determined than his gaze although lacking the same wrathful menace. The warlock attempted to cower.

“He is more afraid of your presence than anything that has occurred since his arrest and therefore more dangerous.”

“Better to be a willing corpse than unwitting accomplice.” Arthur’s words scalded the air, burning Merlin’s forehead and cheeks.

“You would challenge me?” Uther asked with full authority.

“I would win.”

It was stated simply, without boast or threat. Uther knew it was true and shared the warlock’s fear of his son. He nodded abruptly. If they chose to destroy each other, so be it. Despite Merlin’s treachery, Uther thought perhaps he would not fight Arthur. He had confessed to a lifetime of magical acts, rapidly listing them without prompting, refusing only to reveal his motives. He offered no resistance nor provided new information regardless of the methods used against him. Uther left Arthur to it.

Arthur glared from Merlin’s eyes to wounded wrists stretched above his unwashed head then followed down to the bonds around his ankles, ashamed and appalled to see he was clad only in an oblong of cloth. This fact startled the glare away.

“Where are your clothes?”

“Prisoners aren’t normally practically naked then?”

“Not that I’ve seen. Stop that!”

“What?”

“Being friendly and...” he’d never seen Merlin without clothes on. He was so thin and afraid and “vulnerable.”

“I’m not using magic to escape,” Merlin’s voice tremored.

“Why not?” Arthur’s glance at Merlin’s eyes bestowed unmasked suspicion but he couldn’t stop noticing how very _thin_ Merlin was. He could probably count every bone yet he hadn’t been captive long enough for them to starve him into submission. Arthur found he wanted to sooth and comfort the distressed limbs, ease the fear of his friend. “I said stop it!”

“I’m not doing anything!” 

Arthur had heard this protest before and he didn’t believe it now anymore than he had any other time, even those few times when Merlin had in fact been telling the truth.

“You’re making me think things. Feel things...”

“No I’m not.”

“...think about feeling things...”

“I am not! You’re just thinking the same things I’m thinking.”

“What?” Arthur had gotten slightly caught up in the ‘thinking about feeling things’ category of thought.

“It hurts and I want it to stop, more than my joints. Do you have any idea how much it hurt lying to you for so long? Hiding from someone I counted my closest friend? How much it hurts now, knowing you hate me? Stick your sword in me and get it over with!”

“I—beg—your—pardon?”

“That big thing dangling from your waist, shiny metal pointed thing you haven’t been able to keep your hand off since you walked in. Stick it in, kill me and you’ll be back upstairs in time for breakfast. I think there are kippers today so you probably don’t want to rush but I really would like to get on with this, my neck is starting to cramp.”

“Why refuse to say anything for however many hours under torture only to say ‘had enough now, do me in’?”

Arthur did such an impressive rendition of fed up Merlin that Merlin laughed. _He really is terribly thin...look at those bruises...you can see everything jiggle as he chortles away..._ everything.

“You’re doing this...”

“Making you hot for me? Oh no, you’re doing that all by yourself. If I could tamper inside your head we wouldn’t fight all the bloody time would we? You would have already told Uther you want to marry Gwen instead of dragging me on another bloody hunting trip! I’d make you think I was innocent not sprawl here like a sacrificial virgin. Stop looking like that! So...so, so, so! It makes me...”

Arthur could see what it made Merlin by the shape shifting under the degrading loin cloth. Merlin saw him see. Merlin also saw Arthur’s reaction to what he was seeing.

“Kiss me Arthur and I’ll tell you what you want to know.” Merlin was mentally cursing himself for being the most idiotic idiot of all time when Arthur sat next to him and hovered over Merlin’s lips.

“Everything?” he whispered before closing his no longer entirely angry eyes and brushing his no longer furious lips across Merlin’s. 

“Yes,” Merlin barely exhaled the word. 

Arthur pressed and moved his mouth against Merlin’s who responded in kind before adding a flick of the tongue. _Idiot...oh, perhaps_ not _an idiot, keep up the good work._ Arthur grabbed the side of Merlin’s head and held them together as their tongues sought dominance over the other’s mouth.

“Ahr! Chainmail, nipple, chest hair!”

“Sorry, what? Oh!” Arthur awkwardly attempted to remove his mail shirt without its weight colliding with his inconveniently hardening...Merlin cast a spell to help him. “You said...!”

“I said I wouldn’t use it to escape, not that I wouldn’t use it to help _you_ escape. That’s what it’s for isn’t it? For you, everything, no, most, quite a lot...”

“You’ve lost me. Try to talk in a straight line this time.”

“My magic only exists for you.”

Arthur looked curiously into eyes still afraid but also something else.

“What do you mean?”

“That’s its purpose: protecting and helping you. Ultimately, the reason I was born is for you.”

“So you have no choice?” Distant chill reappeared in Arthur’s posture, tone and eyes. 

“I always have the choice, usually I...Look: I’ve used magic under your father’s nose, for you; lied, for you; I surrendered yesterday, for you. I withstood hours of torture and remain strapped to this thing – for you! Not only to prove I’m not a monster but to prove I’m sorry for not telling you the truth.”

Pain. 

That was what Arthur saw in Merlin’s eyes, not the shallow physical pain of the hours since his capture but the unfathomable ache born from knowing every effort still came to naught.

Overwhelmed by what Merlin had performed and endured over many years, all for him, Arthur kissed him again. 

“You died for me Merlin. Gaius said it was nothing short of a miracle because the antidote was given too late. You drank the poison that killed you in front of me.”

“You reciprocated...You can’t seriously be offended by— _oh_.” Merlin thought Arthur was leaving but only moved to release Merlin’s ankles and started rubbing some life back into them, deliberately looking at the far wall.

“So you’re not going to kill me then?” Merlin quipped hopefully but without confidence. Arthur remained unpredictable.

“Haven’t decided yet,” he quipped back. His eyes and finger wandered from Merlin’s ankle up his leg, finger idly tracking down, up, down as eyes continued up to meet Merlin’s. “You confessed you practically live for me,” _that you choose to, not have to_ “your entire adult life devoted to me, wasted. In killing you I’d probably be killing myself.”

Merlin’s leg had rolled involuntarily in response to the emotional meaning of Arthur’s words. Arthur’s finger unknowingly ran along the inside of his thigh rather than the top, causing Merlin’s eyes to widen as his breath whistled.

Arthur looked to his hand and was again astonished by how thin Merlin was. He spread his muscular sword hand around Merlin’s thigh to measure it, not thinking how Merlin’s breath shortened and heart quickened, only how fragile the mighty warlock appeared: Puny. His anger returned, knowing Merlin’s dignity had been deliberately reduced to boost the prideful victory of his captors.

“This bothers you?” 

“Of course it bothers me. You’re my friend. I should have protected you. Given you some sausage occasionally...”

_ I meant being nearly naked, what’s Arthur talking about? What was I talking about? _

Arthur’s hand felt so pleasant and warm. The prince didn’t realise he was tapping a finger against Merlin’s inner thigh in time to the throb of Merlin’s increasing erection until he noticed again fearful eyes flick down embarrassed. Arthur’s eyes followed, his pants jigged in response, his hand tightened around Merlin’s thigh, Merlin hardened and the cycle continued, escalating with each round lasting less than a second before his hand...moved...up...

“ _Arthur!"_ Merlin gasped in surprised pleasure at the contact.

“I...”

“ _Oh?”_

“Yes?” 

Arthur’s hand didn’t leave as he moved forward to kiss Merlin again. He half lay along him and Merlin trapped one liberated leg between his as Arthur stroked over and then under the cloth.

“ _Auh_ ” he half-sighed over Merlin’s mouth and pressed against him. Merlin responded with an “ohh” that was a half-note higher, rubbed his free leg along Arthur’s and tilted his hips. They moved in time with their accelerating breathing until Merlin burned in Arthur’s hand.

Arthur’s other hand went to his belt.

“Splinters,” Merlin warned.

Arthur removed his belt and shirt, lifting Merlin’s bum and back to slide it under his bare skin, kissing all along the way. When he reached Merlin’s mouth they tongue-jousted some more as he lowered his breeches to mid thigh. His knees rested under Merlin’s bum, whose legs splayed either side of him like an uncooked chicken. Arthur licked a hand and returned it to Merlin’s cock, this time applying a teasing twist at the end of each upward stroke.

“In you?” It was half question half yearning declaration. Merlin answered by lifting an ankle to Arthur’s shoulder. Arthur sucked a finger from his other hand while Merlin watched the gently sun-kissed hand slide up and down his lust-darkened dick. By his expression Arthur estimated his climax would be arriving shortly. 

Merlin felt his balls lifted gently and then a thrilling touch running over the bridge to his rim and back.

“So nice,” he sighed with a satisfying smile into his prince’s eyes. Arthur did it a few more times than circled the rim lightly. Merlin’s hips followed the motion and Arthur watched then pressed his fingertip against and into the opening which made a faint ‘p’. Merlin’s hips jolted slightly up as Arthur rocked slightly forward and their cocks touched. Arthur’s finger edged further in. Arthur snatched their cocks together and worked more urgently- pulling, twisting, pushing and squeezing with that hand, poking and turning with the other until they were both repeatedly muttering “yes” and Merlin overflowed in his hand with a loud, sharp “Guh”. 

“So good!” Arthur exclaimed softly. Merlin’s bucking reflex to Arthur’s slower, firmer milking action was hindered by the second finger now stretching his arse. He watched the fluid ooze out of him slowly after the first rapid bursts, watched Arthur smear more of it onto his cock than Merlin’s.

“Watch my eyes closely Merlin, I’ll be watching you, if it doesn’t feel right let me know.”

Merlin’s softening cock twitched and his breath hitched as Arthur gently daubed his coated knob against Merlin’s entrance then pushed his tip in with a moan of absolute pleasure. His eyes fluttered then closed as Merlin’s ring closed around the ridge of his knob. Merlins’ widened at the brief, unexpected pain then marvelled at Arthur’s reaction.

“My god Merlin,” he hushed and inhaled before opening his eyes again. “Are you alright? Can I move?”

Merlin’s throat refused to co-operate so he nodded minutely. Arthur leaned to try and kiss him again, sliding roughly in. He and Merlin both winced and fidgeted. Merlin lifted his other ankle to Arthur’s empty shoulder, he “ _Auhed_ ” with Arthur as they slid together for a far more comfortable fit. Arthur slipped back so the rim of his knob bumped against the inside of Merlin’s ring.

“Oh god,” they gasped together.

 Arthur moved again, sliding deeper each time—“You feel incredible Merlin, oh yes, let me in, let me IN”—until he was able to lean forward enough to slide his hands under Merlin’s shoulders and kiss him.

Merlin whispered a phrase Arthur did not understand and his eyes changed colour as he made everyone who passed through the nearby corridors hard of hearing and locked the door.

_ I’m going to die doing Merlin! _ Arthur thought, convinced Merlin was using magic against him until Merlin turned his hips a little and both pairs of blue eyes widened as he exclaimed “God Arthur, there, push it there!”

Arthur obeyed, lunging faster, feeling Merlin rub and twist against him, bouncing Arthur’s balls with his surprisingly curved arse cheeks. 

“ **Uhho-hoa**! That’s it Merlin! God yes, keep doing _that_! Yes, Merlin, yes!”

Arthur grabbed Merlin’s wrists (he’d forgotten about releasing them and even now it didn’t register) and thudded as hard and fast into him as he could. Merlin was grateful for Arthur’s shirt beneath him as Arthur forced him to scoot up and down the wooden surface with every majestic thrust. The pressure on his tortured arms was relieved somewhat as Arthur hammered him so hard they scooted up the rack further than down.

It still wasn’t enough. Arthur let go of Merlin’s wrists, grabbed his ankles as he pushed forward to force himself so deep inside Merlin’s arse the warlock cried out and curled his back. Arthur pulled all the way out and drove deep.

“Again,” Merlin commanded. “Again Arthur...again.”

He moved so fantastically beneath him that Arthur was happy to oblige, quite forgetting the man he was having incredible sex with could obliterate him with a word until once again Merlin’s eyes changed and unfamiliar words husked out of the expressive lips Arthur was gaining so much satisfaction from watching. Merlin’s bonds released him and he reached forward to rake fingers through Arthur’s hair.

“Merlin, please, let me come inside you before I die.”

Merlin held Arthur’s hair so they maintained eye contact while he expressed enthusiastic pleasure and Arthur emptied into him with a shout.

“How many times my lord?” he challenged hoarsely before kissing Arthur lustfully. 

Arthur slapped into Merlin wetly while he was still hard, finding the sound and feel of their union incredibly gratifying.

“How many stars are there?”

“Millions.”

“Make more.”

“Can’t. Can do this though...” he kept Arthur hard until his body was able to orgasm naturally again.

He listened to Arthur’s thoughts to know when and how to shift positions and was rather dazzled by the many combinations Arthur came up with. Keeping things smooth between them was another challenge Merlin eliminated. They made it through less than half of Arthur’s possibilities before remaining slack on their sides, chaffed, sore and exhausted with Arthur at Merlin’s back

“If this is how you intend to interrogate prisoners when you’re king you’re going to have a very high surrender rate. Your streets will be empty and your dungeons full.”

“You can’t stay here Merlin. But it can’t look like you escaped. They’ll follow you.”

“What, no afterglow? No wonder Gwen’s so grumpy since you started...”

“Shut up Merlin. For me to lie naked beside you as long as I want to right now we’d both have to be dead.”

“That long huh?”

“That long,” Arthur assured him further by stroking his bare arm while kissing his neck. “But we have to get you out of here.”

“So I have to die...”

Arthur’s embrace constricted reflexively. His fear of Merlin had once again become fear for him. Merlin continued rapidly to put his mind at ease.

“...just a bit.”

“ _Just a bit_? The same size ‘just a bit’ that nearly got me completely killed getting rid of...”

“No, no...no.”

“A bit more, then?”

“N...we’...yes, but there’s no poison or antidotes, all I need is you to ‘kill’ me and my talents will do the rest.”

“I’m learning you have many talents Merlin,” more than Merlin’s face became heated by the implications of that statement. “Unfortunately the ability to deliver a straightforward response when questioned is not one of them.”

Merlin intended to back-elbow Arthur but the naked prince _when did the rest come off? Oh, that’s right..._ had yet to relax his hold.

“None of that now Merlin,” his voice was smugly content, knowing he withheld a modicum of control. “So you pretend to die—then what? You do realise they will behead, inter, burn or do something equally lethal afterwards to ensure you truly are dead.”

“Do you trust me?”

Arthur’s body withdrew completely.

“Do you really need to ask? That is the vilest insult you have ever thrown my way.”

“Worse than clot pole?”

“Pole you, you clot!” Arthur muttered, scrounging for his clothes.

“You just did,” Merlin replied with the broadest, cheekiest grin, “rather effectively too.”

 “That’s what’s so infuriating about you Merlin!”

“My agile wit?”

“You make me feel horrible about myself then show you love me anyway...” They looked at each other with _I cannot believe I actually said that, therefore you did not hear me actually say that and I shall behave as if such a thought never considered approaching my mind_ and _I cannot believe you actually said that, therefore I shall pretend you didn’t, no matter how surprisingly relieved I am that you finally made us both realise what I’ve been denying to myself for ages_ faces. “So after you prevent yourself from becoming irrevocably dead, where will you go, to Ealdor? Your mother will most likely come after me for not looking after you like I promised.”

“You...? Did you?...I think she’d be a bit more concerned that you spent more than half a day with your dick up my arse than...”

Arthur glared. Anger, determination and pain returned to his gaze.

“What happened here goes no further than this room.”

Merlin understood it was not his reputation Arthur was protecting but his heart.

“No matter what they do to me I’ll be coming back to you,” his gentle voice was adamant. “Nobody will recognise me so there won’t be any trouble.”

Looking at the naked figure before him Arthur wondered how he hadn’t snapped him like a twig, especially... _stop that!_

“Eat half a cow per week for the next month and no-one will recognise you.”

“There’s my Arthur,” Merlin smiled. “I’m ready now.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes you can. I can’t return if I kill myself.”

“You’re definitely coming back?”

“For you.”

Merlin decided to help Arthur dress for the last time. He couldn’t resist kissing his forlorn lips and whispering promises to strengthen Arthur’s resolve.

“You can do this Arthur. You can do this for me.”

“For you,” they shared one last, tearless kiss and Merlin stood boldly in front of him.

“Now I’m ready. Grab your sword. Single blow, I promise. Do you want some fake screaming and explosions for effect? You won’t hear it, just the guards. Some scorch marks in the stone for you to remember me by?”

“Shut up Merlin.”

Arthur readied his grip, swiped Merlin’s head off in one stroke and bellowed “GUARDS!” 

Witnesses ran in, Arthur walked out as the headless corpse burst into sudden flame in front of them. 

Then he went upstairs and began to wait...

 

 

  


[sequel for those who want one](http://shutupeccles.livejournal.com/23604.html)


End file.
